It is well-known today that both commercial and domestic activities produce an enormous amount of solid waste. Almost all of this waste is deposited into municipal landfills causing existing landfills to quickly fill to their capacity. Therefore, landfill space is significantly limited making it a valuable commodity. It is, therefore, necessary to efficiently utilize presently existing landfill space to its maximum landfill capacity. Developing new landfill sites or expanding existing ones could help alleviate the problem of dwindling landfill space. However, obtaining the necessary approvals for construction of new landfills on virgin land is extremely difficult. Therefore, this problem is preferably solved by maximizing the amount of solid waste existing landfill sites can handle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,733 issued to Katz teaches that by compacting municipal waste, to increase its density, an existing landfill can contain a greater amount of solid waste. However, the problem with this technique is that biostabilization of the existing municipal solid waste is not facilitated. Compacting merely increases the density of the solid waste present within the landfill, without actually decreasing the amount of solid waste within the landfill. In fact, compaction of the waste impedes its biostabilization.
Techniques typically utilized in the disposal of other types of wastes create a number of problems when used for municipal solid waste disposal, particularly, within a landfill. For example, static pile aeration is conducted on concrete, other solid pavement, or virgin land and not on the landfill. When used in the landfill static pile aeration facilitates the intrusion of methane gas emanating from subsurface buried waste, differential settlement of the working surface, variation of water saturation elevations, and elevated water emissions. Also landfills are typically infested with nuisance vectors such as flies, insects, birds and animals which are attracted to municipal solid waste.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for increasing the effective density (that is, the number of tons of waste received, measured by a weight scale, divided by the number of cubic yards of landfill volume consumed, measured by a topographic survey) of a typical municipal solid waste landfill which thereby conserves landfill capacity and is of significant commercial value to the landfill owner.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a method of increasing the effective density of a landfill that does not impede the biostabilization process but rather enhances it, thereby reducing the actual amount of municipal solid waste.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of landfill management capable of dealing with the unique problems associated with municipal landfills.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a method for efficiently placing solid waste which utilizes readily available recycled waste materials.